Dangerous Hurricane Gustav, which has already killed more than 70 people in its meander through the islands of the Caribbean Ocean, remains aimed at a midnight Monday landfall on the central Louisana coast just west of Morgan City and Houma as a Category 3 hurricane.

This forecast speeds up landfall very slightly. Tropical storm force winds will extend out 120 miles to the northeast at landfall, which would include most of the New Orleans area. Hurricane force winds will reach out 75 miles to the northeast, which could include West Bank communities in St. Charles and Jefferson parishes.

Forecasters Eric Blake and Lixion Avila of the National Hurricane Center predict Gustav will still have hurricane strength winds when it is just north of Lake Charles a full day after landfall. Such a slow passage over the state would impose an additional threat of flooding rainfall for both south Louisiana and southeastern Texas.

Gustav will be even stronger in the 36 hours before landfall, with the offical forecast calling for it to become a Category 4 storm with winds of 133 mph by 1 p.m. Monday in the southeastern Gulf of Mexico.

That could increase the threat posed by storm surge accompanying the hurricane as it moves ashore. Scientists at Louisiana State University warn that Gustav's diagonal path across water-rich wetlands in the Barataria-Terrebonne and Atchafalaya basins could result in devastating surge flooding of communities all along U.S. 90 in south Louisiana.

The threat of surge flooding in the New Orleans area is less clear, but LSU coastal wetlands specialist Robert Twilley said surge waters could reach well above Barataria Bay towards West Bank communities bordering Lake Salvador and other wetland areas south of the city.

Gustav reached Category 3 strength at 5 a.m. Central time today, as an Air Force reconnaissance plane found sustained winds of 115 mph as it approached the western tip of Cuba. The winds had increased to 120 mph by 7 a.m.

Hurricane Center forecasters continue to warn that Gustav's pathis anything but certain as it reaches the northern Gulf coast, thanks to a high pressure system expected to build south into Texas in the southern United States, and the timing of the departure of a trough of low pressure that extends into the central Gulf.

Some computer models slow Gustav as it reaches the shoreline and turn it west, almost in a semicircle.

The forecast's margin of error balloon now stretches from Mobile on the east to the southern Texas coast between Brownsville and Corpus Christi.